2 papers
math.HO2025
Episodes from the history of infinitesimals
Mikhail G. Katz
Infinitesimals have seen ups and downs in their tumultuous history. In the 18th century, d'Alembert set the tone by describing infinitesimals as chimeras. Some adversaries of infin…
math.HO2025
History of Archimedean and non-Archimedean approaches to uniform processes: Uniformity, symmetry, regularity
Emanuele Bottazzi, Mikhail G. Katz
We apply Nancy Cartwright's distinction between theories and basic models to explore the history of rival approaches to modeling a notion of chance for an ideal uniform physical pr…